Sadness, pouring out of me,
Dripping on the floor.
Anger, rolling off in waves
And slamming out the door.

I wish that I could leave behind
The anger and the pain
And know that that's the end of it
I won't be hurt again

But we all know that family
Can hurt you more than most
They'll use and leave an empty shell
A broken soul, a ghost

Pick-pocketing angels leave me with no change
Tampered pill bottle head, rattling brain rearranged
Hold me close like a nostalgic note
Please don't toss me away like the others do

Each year it happens.
The apple tree viewed from my balcony
gives up its fruit
until at last one solitary apple
remains high up,
beyond reach,
riper, redder, more robust
than any of the others
that have fallen or been gathered.

Unmoved by rain,
unshaken by winds.
It is as if
this one remaining fruit
is determined to resist
the onset of winter.

Day after day
I awaken;
raise my bedroom blind,
rub my eyes
and seek it out
amidst the protecting foliage.

At first resistant to my gaze,
it then proudly displays
its presence,
as if to say
“Behold, I still remain,
a testament to the perseverance of Fall.”

Each year I too remain
despite the apple’s everlasting reminder
that I myself am transient
and will one day
be shaken from my bough.

I am reminded of O. Henry’s last leaf
painted by an aged artist
to give support and strength and sustenance
to fading hope of life’s recovery.
Perhaps the apple, too, is but a dab of oil
on canvas.

Indeed, am I myself a product of
an artist’s keen, unfailing eye;
living in some vast
parallel universe
adjacent to and yet unseen
by all those bygone friends,
amidst an orchard of fallen, rotting apples?

How do you explain
The notion of a breath?
Would you describe it as the ease
With which his cedarwood undertone swirled
In and around your nose? Or the satisfaction
Of having him set off every nerve in your core?

Perhaps a breath is simply the eagerness
To take him in; to be completely consumed by
His trace of leather and oak;
To inhale the taste
Of merlot and cigarettes
That dances on his tongue.

You crave
One more breath of his sweet
Perfume to ease the poison now
Filling your veins, your heart;
A wild fire in your lungs grows
That only he can extinguish.

He is the sweetest air and
You gasp for him,
But he does not answer,
He merely lets you consume him,
Selfishly, until he is nothing
And everything,
As your lungs continue
To reluctantly swell
And depress in perfect rhythm
With his beating heart.

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat *****;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and *****-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

I look around constantly
I slide down in my seat
I hate looking in the mirror
I hide from me
Their words scare me

I roam the hallways with my head down
I speak only when spoken to
I'm not the one people walk over to
Kayla who?
They have no clue

I sit alone at lunch
When I eat I never crunch
I sit in a hunch
It controls me
I cannot finish
I stand and walk away quickly

My skin has gone prickly
As it does every day
My hand accidentally brushes against someone familiar in the hallway
"Geez! Your hands feel like ice! Why are you always freezing?"
I mumble the excuse of a cold lunch
I stumble away

Trees reach up
The leaves reach out
The roots grow deep

Thus is my love for you

Plant your feet in my soil
Taste the salt of my soul
Place your future willingly

Thus your love for me

Sing the chorus of every leaf
Waving in a tempest tossed
The choir in green goes aloft

Thus our love is forever more